Known for stories and novels that force us to question the conventional dichotomy between realist and fantasy fiction, Kevin Brockmeier knows how to reveal the strangeness of the world around us. In conversation with Mary Stewart Atwell, Brockmeier discusses his new novel, The Illumination, and the compelling metaphors that inform his writing.
Donald Lystra, who published his first novel Season of Water and Ice after retiring from a career as an engineer, talks about making the transition from engineering to writing, publishing with a small press, winning a Midwest Book Award, and what people get wrong about the 1950s.
When The Clash asked the question “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” Jennine Capó Crucet had an answer. In How to Leave Hialeah, Crucet’s debut short story collection, characters wrestle with how the places they’re from shape their identity, how to grow beyond them, and why leaving is sometimes the only answer.
Award-winning short story author and bon vivant Simon Van Booy releases his first novel, Everything Beautiful Began After, and proves that his crystalline, poetic prose, showcased in essays and short stories up to now, is also compelling in long-form fiction.
Over the past six decades, Iraqi writer Mahmoud Saeed has used his novels, stories, and nonfiction to deconstruct the political and social turmoil of his beloved homeland. In a wide-ranging conversation with Stephen Morison, Jr., Saeed describes the difficulties Arab authors face in getting published, the institutionalized barriers to freedom of expression, and his constant attempt, through fiction, to “solve the puzzle of man and his actions.”
Myla Goldberg, author of Bee Season and lead singer of The Walking Hellos, discusses her voracious reading as a child, her new novel The False Friend, the trickiness of memory, love of a good trashy novel, and much more with Casey Tolfree.
When WTO protestors mobbed downtown Seattle in 1999, breaking windows and burning dumpsters, Keith Scribner was a new father, and it made him wonder how it would feel to have that chaos on his own street. In an interview with J.T. Bushnell, Scribner talks about how those thoughts sparked his newest novel, The Oregon Experiment, what it means to pursue the writing life, and why perfume labels don’t list the ingredients.
Debut novelist Jenny Shank brings her affection for the American West to The Ringer, a searing tale of racial and class tension set in contemporary Denver. As the Books & Writers Editor at NewWest.net, Shank champions stand-outs of the current Western-lit cannon.
Aaron Cance interviews Jonathan Evison about his new novel, West of Here, a rich and complex self-examination, a study of the struggle between the human need to move forward and the historical inertia that is the result of our congested lifestyles. Its flawed, yet sympathetic cast of characters is compelling, as are the philosophical questions it poses. Although it will assuredly take its rightful place in the canon of American Western fiction, readers would do well to think of this work as something more than just another novel.
Andrew Krivak spent eight years preparing to become a Jesuit priest before he turned to writing. He talks with Steven Wingate about his debut novel The Sojourn, borrowing from family history, and the spiritual nature of the sniper’s profession.
In conversation with Anne Stameshkin, debut author Erika Dreifus shares true stories that inspired her collection, Quiet Americans; wonders when it’s kosher for authors to write characters from backgrounds they don’t share; explores how reviewing books makes us better fiction writers; and recommends favorite novels and collections by 21st-century Jewish authors.
Pioneer High School students Carlina Duan and Allison Kennedy sit down with famed Ann Arbor writing teacher and teen center director Jeff Kass to discuss his recent story collection, Knuckleheads. Kass discusses knuckleheadedness as a state of being, why being an outsider is important, the influence of Springsteen on his fiction, and the reason he wrote this book—in part—for his students. Bonus Track: an original off-the-top-of-the-dome list poem by Kass on “happiness.”
